Analyzing historical trajectories of social interactions at varying scales can lead to complementary interpretations of relationships among archaeological settlements. We use social network analysis combined with geographic information systems at three spatial scales over time in the western U.S. Southwest to show how the same social processes affected network dynamics at each scale. The period we address, A.D. 1200–1450, was characterized by migration and demographic upheaval. The tumultuous late thirteenth-century interval was followed by population coalescence and the development of widespread religious movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the southern Southwest these processes resulted in a highly connected network that drew in members of different settlements within and between different valleys that had previously been distinct. In the northern Southwest networks were initially highly connected followed by a more fragmented social landscape. We examine how different network textures emerged at each scale through 50-year snapshots. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying a multiscalar approach to complex historical trajectories and the potential for social network analysis as applied to archaeological data.

The appearance of iconographic-style pottery at fourteenth-century Pueblo villages in east-central Arizona marked an important shift in the decoration of pottery. These polychrome containers were painted with elaborate imagery that contrasts with earlier geometric-style traditions. Remarkably, though the type was circulated and copied throughout the region, we still know very little about how it was used. This paper addresses that issue by analyzing surface abrasions on a large corpus of White Mountain Red Ware whole vessels. Our research not only examines changes in the uses of Ancestral Pueblo ceramics during the late prehispanic period, but underscores the importance of use-alteration studies to interpreting the biographies of ancient objects.

This research revisits the question of the most likely paths traveled during the 1540 entrada of Hernando de Soto and colonizing efforts of Juan Pardo about 20 years later by utilizing the spatial modeling method of geographic information system (GIS) analysis to evaluate the favorability of different paths and place them within the context of recent archaeological and ethnohistoric research. Analysis results make the larger anthropological point that GIS route modeling should explicitly take into account the size of the party traveling. Routes for small parties are not the same as optimal routes for large armies such as de Soto’s, which included hundreds of people, pieces of equipment, and livestock. The GIS-modeled routes correlate with the distribution of contact-period archaeological sites and attested eighteenth-century routes. More accurate estimation of Spanish routes allows us to better model the Native American social, economic, and political nexus of this period, showing that the residents in far eastern Tennessee were probably part of a dynamic borderlands between the chiefdom of Coosa to the west and the ancestral Cherokee heartland to the east. This anthropological refinement in GIS modeling will be useful in investigating ancient paths of interaction in many parts of the world.

This paper examines choices of earth-working tools made by Neolithic Chinese populations. In the Hemudu Culture (7000–5000 B.P.), bone (scapula) digging tools were used from the earliest times, whereas peoples in surrounding areas used stone spades. A range of experiments on manufacturing costs, durability, and use efficiency under realistic conditions show that bone and stone spades are functionally equivalent when soils are soft, but that stone implements provide significant and easily perceived advantages when working harder soils. The persistence of scapular spades in the Hemudu Culture would have constrained decisions about undertaking large construction projects under normal soil conditions. Our results show that, in addition to generalized labor for construction, labor demands for producing earth-working implements for large-scale prehistoric earthworks could have also been substantial. These findings not only help explain the processes of intensifying rice-agriculture and sedentary settlements in the Lower Yangzi Basin, but also create a solid foundation for further investigation of how the recruitment of both generalized and specialized laborers, the organization of craft production, and the relevant logistics for large-scale earthworks may have paralleled concentrations of political power in prehistory.

Carvings that represent polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are commonly found in Dorset Paleo-Eskimo archaeological sites across the eastern Arctic. Relational ecology, combined with Amerindian perspectivism, provides an integrated framework within which to comprehensively assess the connections between Dorset and polar bears. By considering the representational aspects of the objects, we reveal an ethology of polar bears encoded within the carvings’ various forms. Reconstructing the experiences and perceptions of Dorset as they routinely interacted with these creatures, and placing these interactions in socioeconomic, environmental, and historical context, permits us to decode a symbolic ecology inherent in the effigies. To the Dorset, these carvings were simultaneously tools and mnemonics (symbols). As tools, they were used to directly access the predatory and spiritual abilities of bears or, more prosaically, to teach and remind of the variety of proper hunting techniques available for capturing seals. As symbols, however, they were far more powerful, signaling how Dorset people conceptualized themselves and their place in the universe. Symbolic of an ice-edge way of life, the effigies expose the role that this special relationship with polar bears played in the creation of Dorset histories and identities.

Engraved and carved bone and stone artifacts capture our imaginations and are known worldwide from archaeological contexts, but they are seemingly rare and oftentimes difficult to recognize. While preservation issues play a role in the limited recovery of early art objects, research on incised stones and bone from the Gault site in Texas demonstrates that an expectation to find such artifacts plays a key role in their identification and recovery. The presence of incised stones found by collectors at Gault alerted archaeologists to the potential for finding early art in systematic excavations. To date, 11 incised stones and one engraved bone of Paleoindian age (13,000–9,000 calibrated years before present) have been recovered and of these, the Clovis artifacts are among the earliest portable art objects from secure context in North America. The presence of incised stone and bone at Gault led to the development of an examination protocol for identifying and analyzing engraved and incised artifacts that can be applied to a wide variety of archaeological contexts.

Recently, advocates of an “older -than- Clovis” occupation of eastern North America have suggested that bi-pointed leaf-shaped lanceolate stone bifaces provide definitive evidence of human culture on the eastern seaboard prior to the Late Glacial Maximum. This argument hinges on two suppositions : first, that points of this form are exceedingly rare in the East and second, that all known occurrences of these point forms are from landforms or depositionaI environments dating to some time before the late Pleistocene. Neither of these suppositions is supported by the archaeological record. Bi-pointed leaf shaped blades have been recoveredfrom throughout the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, where they have been repeatedly dated, either radiometrically or by association with diagnostic artifacts, to between the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland. Statistical analysis of supposed “older-than-Clovis” leaf-shaped blades demonstrates that there are no significant differences in morphology between them and unequivocally Middle Holocene leaf-shaped blades. Until such time as evidence demonstrates otherwise, there is no reason to accept that these leaf-shaped bifaces are diagnostic of a Pleistocene, much less pre-Late Glacial Maximum, occupation in eastern North America.

Eyed bone needles have been recovered from Paleoindian sites over the last 70 years. Specimens 13,100–10,000 calendar years old average 1.81 ± .58 mm in diameter, similar to 2500–1000 year-old specimens in the Aleutians which average 1.67 mm in diameter. Use of industrial steel needles and experiments with replicated bone needles indicate the broken eyes and mid-length fractures of Paleoindian bone needles are the result of use. Some specimens said to be Paleoindian eyed bone needles are ≤ 3 mm in diameter and likely represent behaviors distinct from those with diameters ≤ 2.9 mm. Many smalldiameter needles have been recovered from sites that also produced ornaments. Small-diameter Paleoindian needles may have been used to attach decorative items to clothing; decorative items could have served as identity icons as human groups became sedentary and established home ranges a few centuries after colonization. Paleoindian residential sites that have produced multiple specimens of small-diameter needles reveal clustering of needle specimens in limited areas, and Varying degrees of association with hide-preparation and needle manufacture and maintenance tools such as gravers, scrapers, and awls. Paleoindians, like some ethnographically documented people and some industrial-age people, had sewing specific activity loci.

Remote sensing has revolutionized procedures for locating buried features at archaeological sites in eastern North America. However, the potential of instruments such as gradiometers to shape innovative research in ways that move beyond survey and testing is not always realized in practice. At the Mississippian site of Moundville, Alabama, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey to serve as the guiding method of community settlement analysis. First, we mapped the distribution of magnetic anomalies across the site. Next, we defined the variability of anomalies and selected a sample for test excavations to correlate specific anomaly shapes and amplitudes with specific cultural features. Once confirmed as cultural features, we extrapolated sample results to identify unexcavated anomalies as specific building forms and other features with a higher degree of probability than would have been possible without confirmation by test excavation. Results include the identification and mapping of over 450 unexcavated probable buildings, nearly five times the number previously discovered in decades of traditional excavation. Because the buried probable buildings have different forms, sizes, distributions, and chronological spans, the interpreted gradiometer map is transformed through interpretation from a static palimpsest of anomalies to a picture of changing community settlement organization.

Powell Plain and Ramey Incised jars are considered to be hallmarks of the Mississippian period at Cahokia, but the actual function of the vessels has not been adequately addressed. This study sought to determine the typical use of both vessel types as indicated by carbonization present on the interior and exterior of the vessel surfaces. Traces of carbonization were identified, and distinct patterns were correlated with cooking behavior. Interior carbonization patterns were the most telling, indicating the preparation of beverages or medicines using a cooking process called “decoction.” In combination with the ceremonial nature of the vessels, the jars with discernible use-alteration evidence indicate that both vessel types were employed almost exclusively for the purpose of ritual drink preparation.

Although Idaho’s Snake River Plain contains a trans-Holocene record of bison exploitation, archaeologists have rarely investigated carcass butchery strategies in the region. We fill this knowledge gap with a study of bison remains from Baker Cave, a late Holocene processing site on the eastern Snake River Plain. We hypothesize that these remains resulted from fat-seeking behavior in response to winter fat scarcity. We explore this hypothesis with a series of variables designed to measure processing intensity: Impacts per Element, Percent Complete, and Number of Identified Specimens/Minimum Number of Elements. All three variables generate similarly strong correlations with skeletal fat utility, suggesting that Baker Cave’s inhabitants organized processing efforts around winter fat scarcity.

Modifications on bone surfaces are taphonomic features that allow, among other aspects of environmental reconstruction, the assessment of human presence. The agents that cause such marks are diverse and of both biotic and abiotic origin. Among the former, marks made by human tools are of paramount importance for archaeologists and paleontologists to identify. Although it is possible to erroneously assign trampling marks to cut marks, several criteria have been recently developed so as to avoid such risks. These methods are applied here to the 30,000-year-old site of Arroyo del Vizcaíno (Uruguay), where over one thousand megafaunal remains have been collected. Some of them show marks that have been interpreted to be the result of the action of human tools. Using a database built up from previous studies of experimentally made marks as an actualistic model, it was concluded that the marks in the Arroyo del Vizcaíno site are unlikely to have been made by trampling, hence leaving human agency as the most feasible cause. This has important consequences for the debate on the human peopling of the Americas and on the process of extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna.

Boyd, Castañeda, and Koenig (2013) recently published a hypothesis in American Antiquity that Red Linear style rock art predates, or is contemporaneous with, the Pecos River style. While the authors present intriguing examples of over-painting at 41VV83 and 41VV612, their definition of the Red Linear style should be questioned based on its lack of diagnostic characteristics relative to the Pecos River style. The Boyd et al. report is preliminary in its findings and falls short of overturning the existing regional chronology; thus, further stylistic studies of Red Linear art are recommended.

In our article “A Reexamination of Red Linear Style in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas,” we presented the results of an analysis of 444 Red Linear style pictographs from 12 sites in the region. Using this greatly expanded data set, we produced a list of diagnostic attributes for the style and documented stratigraphie relationships among pictographs through macro- and microscopic field analysis. We identified 38 examples of Red Linear under Pecos River style, a style previously assumed to be older than Red Linear. No Red Linear figures were identified superimposing Pecos River style. These results were verified by an independent group of archaeologists and chemists engaged in the analysis of Lower Pecos rock art. We concluded that Red Linear style is either older than or contemporaneous with Pecos River style. In Harrison’s comments, he argues that our methods were faulty and the data inadequate to support our conclusions. We address a few of Harrison’s critiques in our response; however, a more careful reading of the original article and supplemental materials is advised.